Hill
Master Guide
Reged: 10/31/04
Posts: 9109
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...there are many consequences that were not carefully considered.
The amount of oil is dwindling quickly. The demand for oil is increasing rapidly.
Thirty-five years ago, due to geopolitical factors, OPEC instituted an oil embargo and the world got a taste of what would happen before too long, no matter how peaceful the future world might become (which it certainly hasn't).
Measures to adapt to less oil included limited ability to purchase fuel, slower speed limits, and a rush to build smaller more fuel efficient cars. There was talk, but little more, of alternative energy sources. Once things stabilized however, cars and trucks got larger and less fuel efficient, much larger than were needed for average drivers. Development of alternative energy resources stopped almost completely. And petroleum prices climbed as fields passed their peak production. Even if every known oil field was leased and run at maximum capacity, the end result would be the same, only delayed by a few years.
I'm a great fan of the concept of alternative energy. The idea of biofuels seems to have only the potential for positive results.
But biofuel crops depend on land to grow them, and there are two sources - either convert existing crop land to biofuel crop production, or clear new land. Both options are being employed and both options have a downside. In the United States and other countries, replacement of existing crops has put pressure on farmland. The prices of wheat, soybeans, and corn have increased rapidly and so has the price of crops destined for the dinner table. Food grown as animal feed has also increased greatly in price with the end result being the increase of all food. For areas around the world where starvation is always lurking, cost of transporting and providing food has leapt upward, placing those areas already suffering at risk for even more extreme famine.
The attached folder has placemarks describing and identifying a small portion of the problems created by attempting to suddenly launch biofuel as an alternative to oil. I've had a post about the problem in mind for some time, but the varous links to more and more details has caused me to keep looking for a better way to present the details. It's still too wordy with too many quotes. Most of the placemarks only loosely identify locations. There is lots of room for improvement, but if I keep it much longer, I suspect it will never get published. There is no special order in which to view the information, but I hope others will find the information useful.
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Edited by Hill (04/09/08 01:26 PM)
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Pragueimp
Explorer
Reged: 02/20/08
Posts: 193
Loc: Prague
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Nice one Hill.
I've been thinking about how to use GE for discussing and illustrating subjects such as this, especially for my teaching work (which focuses on environmental issues).
Trying to combine placemarks on GE with photos and text is not easy. Yours is a good template to work with.
Has anyone else produced similar stuff?
Cheers
Mark
--------------------
Mark
Environmental English
www.envenglish.com
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Hill
Master Guide
Reged: 10/31/04
Posts: 9109
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Quote:
Has anyone else produced similar stuff?
There are many good posts and threads within the E&C forums depicting and trying to explain many environmental issues. And the "Global Awareness" layer has within it such topics as Appalachian Mountaintop Removal which describes the environmental costs of current coal maining practices.
Thanks for the compliment.
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Hill
Master Guide
Reged: 10/31/04
Posts: 9109
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Quote:
(CBS/AP) A third day of riots in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, had by Friday paralyzed the city with looting and violence. The demonstrations began earlier in the week, in protest against rising food prices, and turned into riots.The looting has made access to food even more difficult, doing little to ease widespread hunger among Haitians.
There have been riots in Bangladesh, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal. Rising prices have hit poor countries like Peru (and even developed countries like Italy and the United States).
A confluence of problems are driving the problem. They include soaring petroleum prices, which increase the cost of fertilizers, transport and food processing; rising demand for meat and dairy in China and India, resulting in increased costs for grain, used for cattle feed; and the ever-rising demand for raw materials to make biofuels.
As of December, 37 countries faced food crises, and 20 had imposed some sort of food-price controls. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it's facing a $500 million shortfall in funding this year to feed 89 million needy people.
Commodities - particularly wheat, corn and soybeans - are at all-time highs, meaning farmers are making more off of their products than they did even just a year ago, said Larry Adams, deputy administrator of commodity administration at the Farm Service Agency.
"It is a good thing. But on the other hand, it makes it more difficult for those trying to buy food supplements for the hungry," Adams said. "Budgets don't go as far."
Source
Here is a related Washington Post series about how farmers get paid $15,000,000,000 for disaster relief for disasters that haven't affected them. It explains how, for instance, it is easier and more profitable not to grow rice than to grow it.
Edited by Hill (04/12/08 02:32 PM)
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JavaGAR
Explorer
Reged: 10/07/06
Posts: 478
Loc: New York State
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Hill:
It's good to see that you are bringing this important problem to people's attention. If you are interested in local solutions to global energy issues you may want to look at The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis by Greg Pahl (2007), published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company, White River Junction, Vermont. The book discusses Dr. Marion King Hubbert's Peak Oil concept, promoting a pessimistic view of our future prospects, while maintaining that there exist many things we can do on a community level to at least mitigate the problem. Included are discussions and case studies of solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power, as well as biomass and liquid biofuels. His emphasis in on the benefits of local energy production ownership rather than large national-scale projects.
When thinking about Peak Oil, it is interesting to experiment with the Excel spreadsheet provided in BP's Statistical Review of World Energy. The rather small link to the spreadsheet is in the little green rectangle near the center of the page. You'll find annual statistics on oil reserves and consumption over several decades that can be used to try to predict future trends, for example, how quickly demand might outpace supply according to different models. The user needs to devise the models, and enter and propagate the appropriate formulas. Of course, these statistics, the book, and all other information about this problem should be taken with a healthy degree of skepticism.
Another interesting angle on competition and its impact on the depletion of shared finite resources is Garrett Hardin's (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons.
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Hill
Master Guide
Reged: 10/31/04
Posts: 9109
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The current floods in Iowa and throughout the corn belt mean more than misery for the farmers and other inhabitants living there. They also mean a rise in food and fuel prices. Food because everything from produce to animal feed depends on a good growing season to maintain prices that have remained steady until recently. And fuel because of the demand for corn ethanol which has caused corn to replace other crops to meet the demand for for biofuel.
Quote:
The flood tides enveloping the Midwest will crest across the nation in the form of higher prices in just the places where households have been hit the hardest -- food and fuel.
Floodwaters have spread across the Corn Belt, preventing farmers from planting soybeans and damaging a corn crop just starting to emerge from the ground. Analysts estimate that flooded Iowa and Illinois and the other corn states might produce 15% less of the grain than last year. Some believe the shortfall will be larger.
That pushed corn prices to near $8 a bushel Monday and sparked fears of another jump in food inflation. Already, the cost of food is increasing at its fastest pace in 18 years.
"This is a pretty big train wreck developing," said Steve Meyer of Paragon Economics in Adel, Iowa.
Corn is one of the economy's essential commodities. It feeds cattle and dairy cows, it's cooked into breakfast cereal, it sweetens soda pop and it creates ethanol. The developing shortage is expected only to increase competition for corn among farmers, food companies, ethanol refiners and exporters.
Consumers can expect "to pay more at the pump or more in the food aisle, or both," said Chat Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated demand for corn in the coming year at 12.5 billion bushels.
About 5 billion would be used for feed, 4 billion consumed by ethanol production, 2 billion sold overseas and the rest put to other food, seed and industrial uses. The nation was on schedule to produce just 11.7 billion. The shortfall would be made up by corn grown in previous years and stored.
But because of the soggy plants near Boland's farm and across the Midwest, analysts now think corn production could fall to about 11 billion bushels, draining supplies to precariously low levels.
"Everyone is going to have to cut back," Meyer said.
Some analysts believe the rapid increase in the use of corn to make ethanol has left the nation with little room to maneuver through weather-related disasters in the Midwest.
"Our ethanol policy requires perfect weather, and not surprisingly, we aren't getting it," said Michelle Perez, senior agriculture analyst with the Environmental Working Group in Washington.
Perez said that in establishing federal mandates for the use of renewable fuels, the Bush administration and Congress ignored "the impact this policy could have on food prices, relying entirely on good weather to make this roll-of-the dice decision a success."
Los Angeles Times article by Jerry Hirsch and P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
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Hill
Master Guide
Reged: 10/31/04
Posts: 9109
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An AP report from today's Los Angeles Times indicates that deforestation is increasing. Remember that Google Earth imagery is often a few years old.
Quote:
Amazon deforestation quickens as demand for farms speeds illegal razing
By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer
5:25 PM PDT, August 30, 2008
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) _ Amazon deforestation jumped 69 percent in the past 12 months — the first such increase in three years — as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees, officials said Saturday.
Some 8,147 square kilometers (3,145 square miles) of forest were destroyed between August 2007 and August 2008 — a 69 percent increase over the 4,820 square kilometers (1,861 square miles) felled in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon.
...
The country lost 2.7 percent of its Amazon rain forest in 2007, or 11,000 square kilometers (4,250 square miles). Environmental officials fear even more land will be razed this year — but they have not forecast how much.
...
The Amazon region covers about 4.1 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles) of Brazil, nearly 60 percent of the country. About 20 percent of that land has already been deforested.
Source
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